The stones are set, the grain is waiting… in fact, we’re all ready to go at the Mills Archive, aiming to do what we do best – sharing our passion for mills and milling with people like you. But to get those sails turning again after such a difficult year we need your help.
Your generosity will help the Mills Archive Trust, a nationally accredited, award-winning charity get back to doing what we do best – making accessible all the wonderful, inspiring stories that exist within our archive.
Our work to care for our priceless collections has continued, despite the pandemic, maintaining them in a controlled environment to ensure they remain in top condition for you to consult as soon as the current restrictions ease. We spend around £4,000 on our duty to keep them safe.
As life starts to return to normal, we are looking forward to welcoming back our volunteers and interns. Their work, from cataloguing to creative writing, is vital. It costs us £380 a year to accommodate a volunteer. The pandemic has emphasised the need to make even more of our records and services available on line. Digitising our records is a priority for this year, so that researchers all over the world can view them. It costs £6,000 to host our website for a year.
There are many aspects of our work that need your help, from supporting our volunteer programme to making more of our records available to everyone on line. So please, contribute to our campaign and …
Help us put the wind back in our sails by…
… supporting our wonderful volunteers
We are so looking forward to welcoming our volunteers back to the archive. They have been sorely missed. The work they do for us is invaluable, but supporting them in that work is costly. We need your help to give them the welcome – and the support – they deserve.
Find out more about how your support could help our work with volunteers
… helping young people gain valuable skills
It’s going to be tough for young people in the post-COVID world. To find work, they are going to need to stand out from the crowd more than ever before. With your help, the Mills Archive intern programme can make them do just that.
Find out more about how your support could help our work with interns
…making more records available to you online
With your support, we could do so much more to make our material and expertise available digitally. So many fascinating stories remain locked away in cardboard boxes, only accessible to those who are able to visit us physically. And that, unfortunately, has been difficult of late due to the constraints presented by Covid-19.
… conserving more precious milling documents
Thanks to people like you, we have already rescued, restored and protected over three million milling documents and images, including such treasures as the irreplaceable Rex Wailes Collection. Behind the scenes, rescue and conservation work is ongoing to enable you to access this treasure. If we are to carry on doing so, after such a difficult year, we will need your help.
… keeping precious records safe for future generations
To make sure that our precious records remain in good condition for years to come, we need to store them safely and protect them from damage. That’s no mean feat when you consider how much material we have.
Find out more about the mammoth task of storing miles of items and keeping them safe
… sharing our passion for milling
From armchair researcher to architect, we help an extraordinary range of people. We are so looking forward to gearing up our information service again and to providing you with the answers to your queries about mills and milling. It has been a difficult year, but with your help, we can get back up to speed and deliver our essential service.
